GONG organised in co-operation with the town of Rijeka the Action Day for Rijeka high school students on 12 October 2006 in Rijeka, Croatia. The Action Day is part of the pilot-project “Think Globally, Act Locally!”, which GONG has developed based on the experience of the Centre for Political Participation IPP from Amsterdam.
In May 2006 IPP introduced GONG representatives with the methodology used in their long-range project. The method of this project was developed with the aim of enlarging the extent of young people’s participation in the local community’s development, improving their understanding of the way in which the local government is functioning and of the decision making process, together with understanding the influence that this process has on implementation of local activities, projects and measures. The aim of the project is to build a positive attitude toward politics among young people. During the Action Day 100 students from 15 different high schools from Rijeka stayed in premises of Town government, developing projects on the topic of marking the International Day of Volunteers (5 December). The project was financed by the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Zagreb. It was the first time such a project was implemented in Croatia – a project in which students develop a project which the Town government will implement.
Students who participated in the Action Day were divided into 10 groups. Students from 9 groups were creating their projects during the Action Day under the supervision of GONG group co-ordinators (volunteers) and with help from the town officials and representatives of civil society organisations from Rijeka. At the meeting of the “Youth Council”, which was held at the end of the Action Day, students had to persuade each other with a short presentation that their project is the best. Just as it is the case when real Town Council is in session, student-councillors debated, asked each other questions about the projects and tried to present arguments to defend their own project. One group was the newspaper group and produced a report of the Action Day activities in the form of a newspaper.
After the Youth Council decided that the “LI-LA” group had won, Mayor of Rijeka Vojko Obersnel proclaimed the winning group. He also stated that he was really impressed with the students’ engagement during the whole day. The Town of Rijeka designed 10 000 KN (around 1 370 Euros) out of its budget for implementation of the winning project.
On Volunteers’ Day, 5 December, a series of events took place on three different locations in the town of Rijeka. On Korzo (the main walking street) the winning project from the Action Day was presented with some of the activities from other eight projects, as the students have agreed among themselves. A working group of students from the Action Day continued to meet in GONG office even after all the project activities have finished; they decided to continue volunteering for GONG.
One of the most important results of the Action Day is definitely the overall satisfaction and enthusiasm about the project from the students, Town government, GONG volunteers and all others involved. They all agree that this project has proven that it is not true that young people are not interested in what is happening around them, believing that local community has no feeling or interest in recognising the young people’s interests. By being given this opportunity, young people have demonstrated that they are very much interested and prepared to get involved when given a chance to do so. And a good thing is that Town of Rijeka plans to give them such a chance in the future as well – the Town representatives have stated a wish of making the Action Day into a traditional yearly event and already announced that they are prepared to finance its implementation next year. Town of Rijeka has definitely recognised the benefits from including young people in local politics, but so did some other. On 20 November 2006, on the yearly conference of representatives of town and municipality co-ordination boards for the action “Town and Municipalities Friends of Children”, under the patronage of UNICEF office in Croatia, Town of Rijeka was given a charter for the Best Action 2006 due to its involvement in the Action Day activities. We hope that all this will motivate other towns and municipalities in Croatia to open their doors for students in their community and that in the future GONG will implement Action Day activities all over Croatia.
Sandra Pernar, GONG, Croatia